'..It is entirely clear that the country has gone from authoritarian to totalitarian. This happened on the night from September 18 to 19," Gudkov said in a reference to the ruling party's victory in weekend parliamentary elections.'<blockquote>'MOSCOW -- Russia plans to create a super security agency called the Ministry of State Security (MGB), the name once given to Josef Stalin's Soviet spy apparatus before it was renamed the KGB after his death, Kommersant newspaper reports.
The business daily's September 19 story is based on anonymous sources and could not be independently verified. The report has been neither confirmed nor denied officially, and President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has declined to comment.
..
Gennady Gudkov, a former KGB colonel and liberal opposition politician who was expelled from the last convocation of the State Duma, told RFE/RL's Russian Service that he believed the Kommersant report.
"I think this news is very likely, since last night the country made a decision -- to pursue the worst-case scenario. It is entirely clear that the country has gone from authoritarian to totalitarian. This happened on the night from September 18 to 19," Gudkov said in a reference to the ruling party's victory in weekend parliamentary elections.
Putin's United Russia party secured a constitutional majority with 76 percent of seats in the State Duma, while not a single independent opposition voice was elected. "The monopolization of power today has evidently reached a peak," Gudkov said.
The MGB was the abbreviation given to the security service under Stalin from 1946 to 1953.'
- Tom Balmforth,
KGB 2.0? Report Says Kremlin Plan Afoot For Major Security-Service Shakeup, September 19, 2016</blockquote>
'..The United States said on September 17 that it "does not recognize the legitimacy, and will not recognize the outcome, of the Duma elections planned for Russian-occupied Crimea." '<blockquote>'But the elections appear unlikely to sway foreign governments that see Putin's Russia as deeply undemocratic. There are plenty of allegations of fraud, ranging from multiple voting and ballot-stuffing, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) findings were far from a vote of confidence: The head of the OSCE monitoring mission said the biased state media, the Kremlin's tightening grip on civil society, and restrictions on basic rights marred the election.
In Western eyes, its legitimacy is also undermined by the fact that voting was held in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014 after deploying troops and staging a referendum condemned by a majority of countries. The United States said on September 17 that it "does not recognize the legitimacy, and will not recognize the outcome, of the Duma elections planned for Russian-occupied Crimea." '
- Steve Gutterman,
Crushing Victory, Low Turnout -- Six Russian Election Takeaways, September 19, 2016</blockquote>
'..the Russian parliamentary elections, which breach the international law, call into question the legitimacy of the elected State Duma..'<blockquote>'France does not recognize the results of the "election" to the State Duma of Russia, which took place on the territory of the annexed Crimea, according to the website of the French Embassy in Ukraine.
<blockquote>
“France does not recognize either the legitimacy of the organization or the results of the voting, which took place in Crimea on September 18 this year. Our position is clear and steadfast: like the European Union and the entire international community, France does not recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea,” reads the statement.</blockquote>
..
Most countries have refused to send observers to the elections in Crimea. The OSCE and the Venice Commission did not monitor the results of the voting in the occupied peninsula as well.
Ukraine strongly condemned the conduct of the Russian elections on its territory and called on other countries not to recognize the results, maintaining a policy of non-recognition of annexation.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said that "any results of these elections are null and void", and that the Russian parliamentary elections, which breach the international law, call into question the legitimacy of the elected State Duma and is the reason to expand sanctions against Russia.
A video evidence of voting falsification in Russia has already been put on the Internet.'
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France not recognize results of "election" in Crimea, September 19, 2016</blockquote>
Context<blockquote>
'If Russia is to move forward, Pivovarov says, “we must cease to be Soviet people and overcome the Soviet in us.” ''..Russia’s moral decay..''..the Russian Federation is facing the same problem as the Soviet Union did..''..Russia .. is a typical petrostate with a short-term horizon..' - Maria Snegovaya'Sanctions against Russia will remain in place until Crimea is returned to Ukraine..''..I, for one, couldn’t imagine that Russia would flout international law to the point of annexing Crimea..''..Zero tolerance for Russian intrusions .. Estonia .. policy of publicly naming or prosecuting spies..''..the Soviet Union was cut off from Western financial markets and was effectively under permanent sanctions..''..Ukraine's recent reform efforts have garnered little by way of attention in either the United States or Europe..'</blockquote>